


Rot of the Mushrooms

by sadwolf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Bipolar Disorder, Bipolar Lydia Martin, Delusions, Eichen | Echo House, Gen, Manic Episode, Mental Illness, Paranoia, Psych Ward
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 22:13:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19798831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadwolf/pseuds/sadwolf
Summary: Most of the other patients, if that’s who they really were, were drawing, scribbling, and painting at the tables. There was an old boombox playing the latest hits from the radio with slight static that sounded like whispers meant only for Lydia. She tried to ignore it. Some of the patients were outside, where there was a basketball hoop and they were bouncing a few orange balls to each other and through the hoop. It was a tiny court with tall hedges and a fence all around, and a small patch of grass nearby.Lydia had never felt so trapped.





	Rot of the Mushrooms

**Author's Note:**

> this is based very heavily on my own experiences with bipolar disorder and a manic episode in which i was admitted to the psych ward. i wrote this mostly to get some catharsis about the experience but also to convey the experiences of a bipolar person to others and also to write a story where there is not a supernatural explanation for mental illness as this is not the case in real life no matter how much i and others experiencing mental illness may wish for this to be the case. i have written a couple chapters ahead but not much so updates will probably be sporadic

Lydia stared at her legs as she sat, not acknowledging the voices around her, not adding her own voice to the chorus of whispers, knowing she would only make it louder and that her mind was racing too quickly to form any coherent kind of addition anyway. She could barely remember how she got here and she wanted to scream, but her throat felt raw from screaming already, though she didn’t remember screaming at all.

There was a stickiness to her cheeks that meant she might have been crying at some point, but now she felt utterly calm, and she took a moment to reflect on how blank and _crazy_ she must have looked in that exact moment, her hair wild and tattered and no doubt filled with tiny sticks and dirt and leaves from her night in the woods, her eyes empty as she just sat there and stared while she was wheeled into Eichen House, the one place that Lydia had never wanted to end up.

The thought made her want to laugh and she almost did, but she knew she was being watched, she was always being watched and it was worse here, with the nurse just behind her, talking to someone, maybe even talking to Lydia, but she couldn’t focus enough to bring herself to care if she was supposed to respond, so she just stayed silent.

She felt like there might have been someone here earlier, when she had been waiting in a temporary room after first getting here, someone who knew her mother, her mother’s student’s parent, who had told her to stop listening to her music so loud, but she had needed it to drown out her own too fast thoughts that were constantly shouting and piling up and up and up like a tower of caterpillars, and maybe that had been when she had screamed. Or had that been her actual mother? She felt her brow furrow as her memories muddled together in a hodgepodge of confusing ifs and maybes, the only thing certain was that this all felt very unreal, as if this was all a game, or a tv show--perhaps, she was becoming famous. She could imagine them bringing a helicopter here to whisk her away from all of this, that she wasn’t really having a mental breakdown, but that she was, instead, a secret star and this was a trial that all famous people underwent.

Lydia didn’t know why she was in a wheelchair, but the nurse had told her, when she had been trying to leave earlier, when it had become clear that they were going to make her stay here, that the only way they would let her leave would be in a wheelchair, so Lydia asked why, and Lydia forgot the answer or perhaps had stopped listening but she knew none of the answers made sense. Lydia wasn’t used to being so completely confused, to her own mind betraying her when she was usually so calculating and focused.

Eventually the movement stopped and Lydia came to realize that they had arrived at what seemed to be a specific ward of the hospital. The nurse was telling her that she could get up now, so Lydia got to her feet, her legs wobbly from a night of wandering the woods, listening to the rot of the mushrooms and singing to the creeks the tales that only the moon could tell her. She had been naked, hating the feeling of her clothes, and she remembered someone, she didn’t know who, maybe it was even herself, telling her she was lucky she hadn’t been arrested.

Now she was wearing a t-shirt dress that had been on the floor of her apartment, and she did remember being back there before coming here. She wondered if they would let her go back again to get more of her things. Who would take care of Prada? She needed to call someone, but they had taken her phone. She was stricken, suddenly, with worry.

“I need my phone back,” Lydia said, voice raw, from something, the screaming probably, had that happened?

“We can’t give you your phone,” the nurse said, voice gratingly patient.

“Someone needs to take care of my dog, I need to make sure somebody is at my apartment to take care of my dog, Prada, she might not be safe,” Lydia continued with a hint of desperation.

“Your mother said she has a key to your apartment and will look after your dog for you while you’re here.”

Lydia looked at her for a few moments, but she wasn’t feeling very calmed by her words. She didn’t feel like she could trust this person. She just wanted to go home, she didn’t want to be here. “I need to go home, I just need to get out of here,” she said, mostly to herself and she took a step forward, toward the large, heavy doors that lead toward the exit they had just walked through.

But this was familiar by now to Lydia, she remembered trying this earlier and she wasn’t surprised when the nurse held her back, a hint of wariness in her expression. “You can’t leave, you already agreed to stay. Let’s get you set up in your room, okay?”

Lydia narrowed her eyes slightly, still not sure that this was really happening at all. This couldn’t really be happening to her. She looked at the door for a few more moments, or longer, or shorter, she couldn’t handle time well at the moment. She turned and looked around the ward, noticing for the first time the other people, the other patients, she supposed, that wandered around the facility. They were dressed in blue hospital scrubs and didn’t seem to be looking at her, but Lydia knew they were watching. She wondered if they were even really patients, or if they were elaborate actors in this game, if there were cameras recording all of this and the truth would be revealed soon if she just kept up the charade long enough.

It was breakfast time, and some of the patients were eating while others were still getting their meals from the cart that had been wheeled in. Lydia didn’t have much time to examine the food or much of her surroundings, besides noting the giant skylight above the common area that would be letting in a pleasant stream of natural light if it wasn’t for the harsh hospital fluorescents, before she was lead to her room by the nurse. She couldn’t help but wonder if her own light was about to be drowned in a similar fashion.


End file.
